Kenan-Flagler hosts Basketball Analytics Summit

Dean Oliver, the director of production analytics for ESPN, said he sat in a UNC-Chapel Hill lunchroom in 1995 with a group of friends, talking about what he loves — basketball.

Oliver told the crowd of nearly 200 students, faculty and professional sport analysts Friday at the Sport Entrepreneurship and Innovation Association Basketball Analytics Summit hosted at the Kenan-Flagler Business School that he and his friends were discussing UNC-CH basketball players Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace.

Oliver, who was conducting post-doctorate research, said Wallace would be a better NBA player, which made his friends call him crazy — as Stackhouse was entering the draft after an All-American season.

Oliver had served as an advance scout in college basketball and was experimenting with new measurements of talent based on numbers. Oliver said he didn’t know how to translate his research yet and began searching for a way to easily communicate his findings.

“I didn’t want to explain it to them,” Oliver said as he sat at the front of the Maurice J. Koury Auditorium with a sweat-stained UNC cap in his lap. “When you’re talking basketball, you’ve still got to talk basketball. That process started in that lunchroom in 1995.”

And nearly 20 years later, after writing his book “Basketball on Paper” and bringing his research to NBA front offices, Oliver returned to Chapel Hill alongside some of the top professionals in sport analytics to educate students on the growing use of data in sports.

The SPEI partnered with the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise to organize the summit. It took place over a two-day period that consisted of six panels, each focusing on a particular field, and was moderated by ESPN College Basketball Analyst Fran Fraschilla.

The summit kicked off Friday afternoon with the 94Fifty showcase at the Dean E. Smith Center, where registered guests received data and feedback on their basketball abilities from the company’s smart sensor basketballs.

Following a reception, Friday evening concluded with a forum featuring Oliver, Benjamin Morris of FiveThirtyEight and members of the Charlotte Bobcats analytics team discussing the use of data in basketball as well as careers and trends.

Debby Stroman, an exercise and sports science professor and organizer of the event, said Friday night was a success due to the friendly atmosphere among attendees that allowed everyone to interact and network.

“We talk about the Carolina Way, and everybody being kind, nice and helping one another,” said Stroman, the faculty advisor for the Carolina Sport Business Club. “Everybody just felt comfortable talking to one another, talking to the big name speakers. It’s very much like a Carolina culture of collaboration and being kind.”

The five panels Saturday shed light on the use of data and technology with fan experience and engagement, enhancing athlete performance, strategies for success in basketball and marketing and tickets.

Saturday also included the presentation of the case competition winner from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The Bobcats provided a real-life analytics case they face as a franchise and allowed students to produce a solution.

Michael Stock, a junior statistics major, said the summit allowed him to learn more about a field he is interested in entering.

“This is my passion,” Stock said. “It’s my major doing statistics, and I’d like to do something like this as a career after graduation — doing analytics in some sport.”

Oliver said settings such as this weekend’s allow him to educate students on the growing field of sport analytics, which is something he constantly strives to do.

“It’s been part of my mission since I started this — to make it clear that math is a lot more than balancing checkbooks,” Oliver said. “It’s a lot more than that.

“It’s a way of thinking about things throughout the world, and most people don’t realize how much it’s involved in sports.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.